Haha, yeah 1 extra to finish the tutorial island and now another one from finishing the Fire temple. I've put 20 blessings into stamina though for a second endurance ring. Longer sprinting is much more useful than more hearts!

After this experiment I went to the sky islands in the NW part. More shrines in the sky, more shrine quests. I left Link at maze in the top right (Lomei). The sky shrine there has a fun race course inside but the maze first has to be completed on surface level. I see there is part of it on the Depths map as well with an undiscovered blip on the map in the top right. There must be a surface shrine then as well linked to a light root and a way to the Depths. Investigating tonight!

I wonder, do Koroks float? Anyone fused one to a rock yet and thrown them into the ocean ;)
And is it possible to make a submarine? The game probably doesn't let you trap air underwater, but Link can hold his breath for a while :)

I finished the NE Lomei maze, pretty cool they have 3 levels now or at least this one had. (And I know the other two have a part in the Depths as well at least). The hardest part was getting back up to the surface... It's a small narrow tunnel to the Depths that opens up into the Maze. It proved nearly impossible to get a flying platform with control stick into that opening, and even when it worked, impossible to stay clear off the walls for that long and any touch traps the 'vehicle' against the wall. You simply can't look where you're going (up) with a control stick.

So back to rocket balloon, which flies straight up (if launched straight) but doesn't last to the top. Adding fans to the bottom finally worked. Still hard to get 3 fans in the right place and flush to the underside of the gondola to get it to launch straight up. Overall well over a dozen attempts and an hour of trying things to get back out. Nintendo certainly made 'no fast travel' 10x harder in TotK. Everything is designed to have you race / glide down and teleport / ascend back out.

I'm finishing up the Shrines in Akala, the NE corner. I visited the now pretty useless horse god, dragged a Korok to his friend by gluing him to the yoke of a horse, delivered by a Moblin. Then abandoned the horse again, too slow. But might try the horses some time to see how much 1hp is in TotK, how much can a horse pull. And can you make a team, multiple horses pulling a train of carts :)

Currently I'm briefly back in the Depths, decided to take a little shortcut detour underground by two forge constructs, to get some more Zonaite converted to crystalized charges. And it does seem everything has reset now. All camps are full again, all resources are back including poes, no trace of any light blooms I left behind. The only thing that's permanent are the crumbly rocks you removed. Anyway nice to have no day/night cycle and no rain nor heavy fog for a little while! Much easier to see down here lol.

Finished all four regional phenomena; the Gerudo one was the best, though all of them were at least good.
The Lightning Temple in particular was super cool, they got a lot of creative mileage out of the light and mirrors mechanic, and it was clever without ever being obtuse or cryptic.
Managed to do the whole area without shelling out for desert gear, which was a fun challenge.

It's crazy, even after doing all four and playing over 40 hours, I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface of the game as a whole.

I'm done with the Water Temple. The buildup to it was great, especially that Ancient Zora Waterworks with the amazing music. The Ruta reworked track of the Water Temple was among the best in the game.

The Water Temple is fairly small, but two puzzles got me scratching my head. The boss was super fun though, and I love the water mechanics. Made myself two Opal rods, an Hydrant shield and stacked loads of Splash fruits.

What I like about the game is how all the secondary characters have a journey within the game, and how much they've changed and evolved from BotW. Sidon clearly carry trauma from losing Mipha and it showed throughout the Zora sequence.

I tried getting back out of the Depths by Death mountain. That proved to be impossible. The tunnel isn't straight and it's far too long from the bottom of the Depths to the top of Death Mountain. Flying a controlled platform (steering stick) doesn't work since you can't look up to avoid the obstacles in the tunnel, plus even with batteries added I doubt my 11.6 battery power is enough. I got a bit into the tunnel but look to run out before I get halfway up Death mountain, 3 charges left while still in the Depths section. However the bigger problem is any snag with a wall and you're trapped, never made it to an empty battery.

So I made a lava platform right under the middle to try rocket + fans balloon to go straight up. Plus the balloon sorta auto corrects when the top hits a sloped ceiling. But even with rockets and fans added to speed it up, the balloon disappears halfway up the tunnel and the remaining platform quickly veers off course. So I hover biked over to the chasm in Southern Akala and flew out there. Also a narrow tunnel but I managed to keep the 4 fans plus steering stick in the middle away from the walls. It used just over 10 batteries to get to the surface, I had 1 left to clear the chasm!

Completed a few shrines, then I got distracted by Tarry town. World's in danger but little Mattison wants attention. Dunno if that's part of the Tarry Town quest. (It's not, Mattison's independence quest is what I ran into) I just looked the Tarrey town quest up and will give it a hard pass for now. I have no 3K rupees to even start it, I have about a hundred lol. Plus it seems to involve going everywhere. I'm on my own schedule. But will get Mattison on her way before moving on. Couple more shrines in Akala and around the Zora domain, then to the water temple. Or get distracted again :/

Someone in Tears of The Kingdom made a working submarine!!

I finished FFXVI, gotta do Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster, Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster, then get XVI's NG+ trophies. This will result in FF1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 16 all 100% platinumed in a row.

Then I can get to Zelda finally!

Nice, looks like they didn't think of that, camera stays above and Link isn't even in swimming state (no stamina meter). Good now I don't have to build one myself, nothing to see under water I guess (and why would there be) Good way to get around or rather underound the Octopests!

Still no water temple for me, got distracted again. I followed the island string on the Eastern edge of Akala, above the surface and down in the Depths. The entrance was another small tunnel straight down. Again the hardest part was getting back out. (Plus the gloom hands at the end glitched and suicided leaving 2 dark clumps laying on the ground next to the treasure chest).

Getting out needed the triple fan rocket balloon again. Impossible to steer into such a small opening, balloon sorta guides itself as long as most of the top gets inside the hole, but never lasts long enough. With 3 fans I my 11.6 batteries weren't quite enough (close) so I used an extra large zonai charge. I thought that was only meant to double up one battery? It restored all of them and doubled up one battery. A glitch? Anyway reached the top cave with plenty battery to spare leaving the basket trapped against the wall as the balloon popped close after reaching the top.

And I happened upon the first memory or cut scene. Doesn't make any sense at all to tell the story this way, or rather the past. Not that it was any new information either, already got all that from finishing the fire temple. Currently looking for a cave again to access a shrine. Knowing where the shrines are from the Depths is only half the battle. Cave entrances aren't easy to spot.

Now there's a Hyrule Megazord terrorizing Ganon's minions.

You lot are out of control with the crazy sh*t you're building.